Authors

By Devon Daniels
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"Be interesting or be gone" she said while shaking the poorly made cocktail mixer, her long fingers becoming moist with martini that slipped through a crack where the body met the cap.

Wanting to stay, he had to be interesting. So he was.

Which was impressive, given that stories had stalked through their lives and rendered so much of what could be between them into stale stereotypes and cauliflower-flavored clichés. The stories stealthy hands stole and snatched and snapped their fingers to the beat of the soundtrack.

"I do something a little dangerous I guess you might say"

"Oh?" she purred as she poured "I guess I might say, if I knew what it was"

"Well, you know I might just tell you if you hand me one of those drinks you're laying out there"

"Don't be evasive, it's tedious" she replied, running her fingers along the rim of the olive jar.

Every human being on Earth was in some way contributing towards the death of the one home they have, including these two, but you can't think about that now.

Sitting on a stool, he looked up at her in a way that struck her just right. A couple of pleasant memories were unlocked by the angle of his shoulders as he rested one hand on each knee and this bought him some time, though he didn't know it.

Smiling, she let him know that "If you tell me a little then you can drink a little".

Coy at first, he told her all about some crimes he was involved in which brought a regular income he could probably have earned at any number of mid-level office jobs. But then those jobs wouldn't have brought him the scars along his forearms, some forming long streaks and others being the result of puncture wounds. A couple of scars combined along the left arm, near his wrist, to illustrate three shooting stars. Ignoring most of what he said, she couldn't stop wondering if this was a pattern that came from chance or if it was something he'd carved himself.

"Okay shut up shut up" she said as sweetly as you can say that "And, um, here is the thing...". One hand on the stem of her martini glass, the other found it's way along his thick neck.

It wasn't long before they were upstairs and she was finding more scars along his body, writing a story in her head for each one. She briefly wondered if he was writing a story about her body, but quickly decided that if so then it was almost certainly a six foot three exclamation mark laying in the dead center of an otherwise blank page that measured the exact width and length of a queen sized bed.

She didn't get pregnant, so she'd done her part for the green movement that day.